The present invention is directed to an animal feed, especially suited for ruminant animals. The feed comprises whole linty cottonseed having a reduced toxic gossypol content and includes other edible foodstuffs, especially soybeans.
Cottonseed is a by-product of the cotton producing industry which has a strong potential as a source of food for various animals, especially dairy and beef producing cattle and related ruminant type animals having multiple stomachs wherein food is processed. However, cottonseed has numerous processing problems associated therewith; including that whole cottonseed is very difficult to grind into a usable meal because it tends to clump and bunches and is very difficult to mix with other grains. Conventionally, delinted cottonseed is often initially processed by compression or the like to remove oils therefrom. Such processing produces a cottonseed meal and there have been numerous prior art processes and products which have attempted to use this meal as a feed supplement for livestock or the like. While cottonseed having various oil compositions may be useable in the present invention, it is preferred that the cottonseed be whole and have the complete hull or linty shell thereof Such whole cottonseed results from the separation of the seed from the remainder of the cotton plant during harvest.
The hull or linty shell of the cottonseed is beneficial to cattle because it is a good source of fiber, but the linty fibers tend to make the cottonseed less palatable to cattle. If the whole cottonseed is fed directly to the cattle without removal of the lint or hull, the taste and texture of the feed are such that cattle either will not eat the feed or will eat other feeds preferentially and leave the cottonseed.
Furthermore, the lint of the cottonseed makes the cottonseed relatively hard to process by conventional methods to break down the seed and make it more palatable. This is because the lint creates substantial friction and tends to plug, pack bridge or otherwise interfere with operation of the equipment or it causes over heating of the cottonseed within the equipment which chars the lint thereby reducing the beneficial fiber content of the lint which in turn transfers to the resulting product a charred taste that is likewise unpalatable to the animals eating it. It is also noted that the oil in the whole cottonseed provides an additional source of energy to the animals eating it. Consequently, it is desirable to produce a feed that will utilize the fiber and other nutrient components of the whole cottonseed, yet will make the cottonseed more palatable to the animals.
A second problem associated with cottonseed is that it includes a yellow pigment called gossypol that has the general chemical formula of C.sub.30 H.sub.30 O.sub.8 and which is a toxin to many types of animals. Fortunately, cattle and other ruminant type animals are comparatively less susceptible to the gossypol toxin, which reduces the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, than are non ruminant type animals. Nevertheless, even when feeding ruminant animals, it is usually desirable to reduce the active gossypol content of cottonseed. Actually there are a number of different forms of gossypol which are closely related and which are all toxins in their active forms. Gossypol does not appear to be an active toxin unless it is free, as opposed to bound to other components of its carrier. Therefore, it is desirable to either bind or chemically alter as much of the gossypol as possible so that it is denatured or detoxified and is no longer active as a toxin and such that the gossypol in the form of an active toxin is significantly removed from the composition.
For best utilization of a feed, especially a grain or seed, it is often desirable for the feed to be cooked or mechanically worked to break down or crush cell walls associated with the feed to make the feed more digestible to the animals eating it. The breakdown of the cell wall especially makes oils and proteins within the cells more available to absorption within the gastrointestinal tract of the animals. However, it is also necessary to not overheat the cottonseed during the cooking process which may destroy important components or may char the product and destroy fiber. It is also desirable to provide what is termed by-pass protein that is not substantially degraded in the first two stomachs of the ruminants (in a degraded form the protein is no longer available for use by the animal as a protein), but rather is made available for absorption in the later stomachs which makes the bypass protein more available to the animal and cause dairy cows to comparatively increase milk production. Cooking tends to convert certain proteins to by-pass type proteins. It is also desirable to sterilize the resulting product by cooking and cooking makes the resultant product easier to convey and to mix with other grains. It is also desirable to produce a feed composition which incorporates other types of grains and feeds, especially soybeans, and which can be further utilized as a base for the addition for the additional grains, minerals or other nutrients.